by Summer Lane
Max takes his team down the road and checks the explosives he setup. He comes back to us. “Somebody messed with my detonations,” he growls. “They were armed and set.”
“Nobody knows how to do that,” Alexander replies.
“Somebody obviously does.”
We cast anxious glances at each other. Is there a traitor in our midst? Or was there simply a technical glitch with Max’s explosives? At any rate, Alexander has turned out to be the hero of the day.
“You improvised,” Chris states, looking at him. “Nice work.”
Alexander shrugs, gruffly moving aside.
“So you set off those explosions, then?” I ask.
Alexander nods.
“Never hurts to be prepared.”
Huh. Chris was right. Alexander is a good soldier.
Weird, but good.
Two of the Omega trucks are still drivable, but the rest of us will have to go on foot to the rally point. Alexander’s team takes the trucks, and we’re left behind to experience all the joys of a hike in the foothills.
“Let’s cut cross country through the mountain pass,” Max says. “It’ll be faster.”
Chris nods. We follow the curve of the highway and hike uphill onto a dirt road, passing a couple of impressive rock formations. An iron fence has been smashed open and twisted. We jump over it and continue through the road, the bushes and trees looking eerie against the dark, cloudy sky.
“I hope you know where you’re going,” Sophia tells Max.
“Of course I do.” He points. “This is easier than climbing over the big hill. This just cuts right through it to the other side.”
“Right, right.”
As we wind our way deeper into the side of the hill, I notice little buildings.
“What’s all this?” I wonder.
“I don’t know,” Chris replies. “Keep your eyes open.”
We keep to our patrol formations, just like we practiced. Chris sends a scout to check out the area ahead, while Sophia and I bring up the rear of the group. We’re always watching. Always listening. Always alert,
If there’s one thing that’s just as dangerous as Omega, it’s nomads and vandals. They hide out in abandoned compounds or houses, living off the leftover food of the previous occupants. Based on my previous experience with desperate people wandering around the state, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s better to avoid them if you can.
The buildings are spaced far apart in some places, and in other areas they’re close together. Chain link fences are nestled into the side of the hills. Trails weave between those fences. Trees and bushes are growing around the perimeter, and there are thick cables surrounding each chain link fence. They look like barriers.
“This is creepy,” Sophia says under her breath.
I have to agree.
“Let’s check it out,” somebody suggests.
“No. We need to get out of the area. Omega will be sending in backup to look for that missing convoy,” Chris replies.
“Hey, look!” I spot a small, brown wooden directory on the edge of the road. I head towards it, flipping out my commandeered Omega flashlight. I flick it on.
Project Survival’s Cat Haven
Beneath is a map of the entire compound; tiger cages, leopard cages, even a lion enclosure. Sophia is staring at it with wide eyes. “You don’t think any of those things are still here, do you?” she asks.
Chris raises an eyebrow.
“If they got out of their cages, it’s possible,” he answers. “Otherwise they’re probably dead if this place was evacuated after the EMP.”
I turn off the flashlight, my heart racing in my chest.
All I need is to come face to face with a starving panther to make this night even more exciting. I mean, come on. Chris takes my hand, sensing my unease, and we walk together away from the directory board.
“Maybe we should go around after all,” Max says. “Just in case.”
“What? Afraid of the little kitty cats?” Chris quips.
“Little?” I roll my eyes. “Yeah. Tell that to the cat that uses your neck as a chew toy.”
He gives me a look. Chris tugs on my arm, his signal for me to keep my mouth shut, and keeps walking. I zip my lips and keep a tight grip on my rifle. Personally, I’d rather be holding Chris’s hand right now, but I’m a soldier these days...and how would that look? By the time we reach the other side of the mountain, I’m afraid to take a deep breath because of the noise it will make. Then again, if we are being hunted by a wild cat, there’s not a lot I can do about it. I’m dead.
“That was mildly terrifying,” I comment.
“Not too bad, actually,” Chris grins. “I’d say me and a big cat are evenly matched, wouldn’t you?”
“Egomaniac.”
We reach the trucks not too long afterwards. We throw our stuff into the back and drive into the night, retracing our path back to base. Everyone’s waiting for us when we return, including Derek’s team. He stayed behind to guard the camp and keep everybody in line while we were gone. With our militia getting bigger and bigger, more people have to be left behind to keep law and order around here.
Sophia and I take our stuff back to our tent and start messing around with it. I rip the Omega patch off the sleeve of the uniform from the dead trooper and replace it with a blue armband. I look over the gun and ammunition, checking our supplies. Even though we got our hands on a lot of stuff, it won’t be enough to last for long. The militia is growing every day. We need more weapons, more ammo, more food, more water and of course, more space.
All of these people bring lots of extra noise, so Chris is thinking about moving our basecamp farther into the mountains. There are pros and cons to that idea. On the plus side, we’ll have more freedom to practice training and indulge in little things like campfires because there won’t be as much of a chance that we’ll be spotted by enemies. On the negative side, we’ll be farther away from Omega hotspots, therefore conducting raids and ambushes will be a longer process because we’ll have to travel farther. Long-range patrols could keep us in the loop about Omega activities while the rest of our forces pull back deeper into the mountains.
In the end, I think safety will win over distance. But there’s always the option of breaking down our forces into smaller camps. I’m not too crazy about that idea, though. I’d prefer to keep our militia together.
“Do you think we’re doing the right thing?” Sophia asks me, picking at her commandeered uniform.
“What do you mean?”
“We’re actually killing people, Cassidy,” she replies, looking up. Her lower lip is trembling. “Are we doing the right thing?”
I fold my hands in the center of my lap.
“It’s kill or be killed. Nothing’s like it used to be,” I say slowly, picturing the dead and dying on the battlefield. “It’s not like we have a choice.”
“But why are we doing it?”
“Who else is going to? It’s our duty to protect our home.” I sigh. “It’s just the way things are. If we don’t fight back, Omega will kill us all. Especially now that we’ve been attacking them. We’re playing offense and defense. They’ve been murdering and enslaving people left and right. We can’t get caught up in our emotions. Either we put up a fight or we let them eat us alive. It’s simple.”
Sophia takes a deep breath.
“But what if this is all for nothing?” she says. “What if we do all of this fighting and sacrificing and Omega still wins? Because if they’re really a huge army with help from places like Russia or China or whatever, we’re kind of screwed, aren’t we? When we were at the labor camp, they were having us harvest food for something big. You said they were getting ready to bring in more troops.” She looks me straight in the eye. “And then Mrs. Young said the big cities have been attacked with chemical weapons, and the rumors about a nuclear bomb on the east coast may or may not be true. How do we stand a chance against an army with that kind of power?”
“We’re motivated.”
“And they’re not?”
“We actually have something worth fighting for.”
“What?”
“Freedom.”
She makes a face.
“How many people have said that,” she says, “and then died?”
“Millions.” I stand up, dusting the dirt off my pants. “I can’t think of anything I’d rather die for, though. I’d rather die fighting than hiding in a hole somewhere. Or in some disgusting labor camp.”
Sophia slowly nods.
“I guess so.”
“You guess so?” I hold out my arms. “Sophia, look around you! We were enslaved together, remember? Kamaneva almost executed me on the front sidewalk of an elementary school. That’s not normal, is it? We’re fighting for normalcy. We’re fighting for what we lost. I think that’s a worthy cause, don’t you?”
She rises to her feet, and when she speaks, I can tell she’s trying to avoid crying. “It is worthy,” she whispers. “You’re right. I just...sometimes I think I can’t do this another day, but I always do.”
“We all feel like that.” I wrap my arms around her neck and pull her into a hug. “Nobody said fighting a war was going to be easy.”
“They sure didn’t. Your boyfriend makes it sound like a walk in the park.”
“He does not,” I laugh. “He’s just knows how to inspire people.”
We turn to watch him. He’s standing on the other side of the camp. His muscular arms are folded across his chest, his hair pulled into a tight ponytail. He’s listening intently to what one of the soldiers is saying. After a few beats of silence, he responds, pats him on the back, and moves on to the next person waiting to speak with him.
“He’s becoming quite a leader,” Sophia remarks.
I feel myself smiling.
“Yeah, he is.”
The truth is, we’ve all changed. We’ve all matured. We’ve all seen things that have forced us to grow up. It will bring out the best in some of us. In others, it will bring out the worst. But when it comes right down to it, at the end of the day, we’re all on the same team.
We’re all fighting to get our freedom back.
And that’s when the name hits me.
Freedom Fighters.
Chapter Twelve
If anybody would have told me seven months ago that I would be spending my college years as a guerilla warfighter with freaking Rambo as my boyfriend, I would have said they were crazy. But life is weird like that. And considering the fact that everybody’s lives have been turned inside out by the effects of the EMP and the invasion of America, everything’s been on a whole different level of weird.
Weird on steroids.
It’s July now, and the heat is brutal. There have been days when the hundred-degree weather is torture. It’s hard to keep cool. The only thing we can do is stay in the shelter of the trees during the day and move around at night. We’ve been consistently hitting Omega where it hurts: convoys, supply depots, anything and everything that will effect their ability to feed their troops or keep their morale up. This is not just a game of firepower. It’s a game of mind over matter. Which one of us is more motivated to win?
We’ve relocated our camp to a higher elevation. It’s easier to keep hidden when we’re farther away from the valley, anyway. And since Omega is constantly combing through the area searching for our “headquarters,” we constantly change the location of our camp, too. If we stay in one place for too long, we’ll be found.
The Free Army – or the Freedom Fighters, as we’ve come to be called – have become pretty well known in the area. Our forces have expanded. We’ve got a few hundred people in our ranks now, and Chris is becoming an impressive leader. He’s logical, fair and knowledgeable. People trust him.
I’ve become something different, too. Instead of just running with the pack, I work with Derek, Max, Alexander and Chris to train the new recruits. I’ve got responsibilities. I’ve got people who look to me for advice.
I never thought I’d see that day.
Despite the fact that our army is made up completely of volunteers – most of which are civilians who have never been in a fight in their lives – we’re well organized. Chris goes to a lot of trouble to train the new recruits, and to keep the older ones’ skills sharpened. Ever since the day Chris almost killed Harry Lydell, I’ve been painfully aware of the fact that all it takes is one wrong move to turn organization into murder. It’s easy to think that all you have to do is get a bunch of people together and fight the bad guys, but it’s not that simple.
It requires structure.
Chris is the head honcho in this camp, something along the lines of a mini-general, but he makes few decisions without consulting his officers first, which would be Derek, Max and Alexander, who are all platoon leaders. They each command a force of about thirty to fifty fighting men and women. I’m not in charge of a platoon, but I am in charge of training the new recruits. Yup, the “newbies” are all mine. I teach them the basics, go with them on missions and make sure everybody is doing their job. We work as a team, so we basically go on a majority vote. Everybody has a say in everything that goes on at the basecamp.
But sometimes things aren’t so simple.
When an organization gets big, there will inevitably be people who will betray you. In this war, betrayal can lead to the death of everybody in the militia, so it has to be dealt with swiftly and effectively. In the event that somebody commits a horrible crime, the officers convene with Chris. All it takes is three command level officers to vote for a punishment to make it happen. So far we’ve been lucky. We’ve only had to punish people for petty crimes like stealing extra food rations, hoarding ammunition and getting into fights. But at some point, somebody will do something so big that we’ll have to figure out how to handle the situation.
Maybe we should just build a jail.
At any rate, we’re not the only guerilla war fighters in the area. Other militia groups have been popping up in the state, an encouraging piece of information we learned from the Underground, a network of rebel militiamen who carry messages up and down the state for people like us. Like undercover pony express riders, they travel on foot from one destination to the next, passing on messages to fellow rebels. They have a dangerous job. They travel alone, they travel fast, and they travel light. The cover of darkness is their best friend as they run from camp to camp, sending messages between the rebel “communities.” If they’re caught, they’ll either be killed or tortured to death.
So of course their number one priority is to avoid getting caught.
Everything has gotten faster, cleaner and more efficient. The Freedom Fighters are turning into a well-oiled resistance front, and I’m starting to find my groove. I never thought I’d fit into a society like this, but life has a way of surprising you. For the first time in my life, I actually feel like I belong somewhere. Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing, I haven’t decided yet.
“I have some new information for you, Cassie,” Chris says one day. The scorching July heat is all but singeing my eyebrows off, so I’m huddled under the shade of a tall tree. The camp is busy with activity – there is no such thing as an idle moment here. Even our sleeping hours have purpose. “Cassie?”
I blink and look up, yawning.
“Sorry. I was dozing.”
He smiles and sits down next to me, one of the few moments lately when he’s been relaxed enough to do this. As the weeks have passed, the stress and pressure of being in charge of this militia have changed him. He’s even more logical and methodical than he used to be. He’s a lot busier, too. People depend on him to make life-changing decisions. It must be difficult to carry a burden like that.
“What’s up?” I say.
“Underground gave us some new information,” he replies.
I lean forward. “Is it good or bad news?”
“Both. The good news is,
there’s a rebel militia force called the Mountain Rangers headed our way.”
I nod. We’ve all heard of the Rangers. They’re second only to the Freedom Fighters in notoriety. “What’s the bad news?” I ask.
“The bad news is, we have to decide if we want to join forces with the Rangers or if we want to keep our group separate. Joint operations change the dynamics. Right now our men work really well together. Bringing in an ally could either mess things up or make us stronger.”
“We don’t know enough about the Rangers to make a judgment, do we?”
“The Rangers are, as far as we know, very similar to our militia. They use guerilla war fighting tactics, they’re quick, they’re hearty and they’re no friends to Omega.”
That makes them on our side, I guess. But Chris is right. Exposing ourselves to anybody is a monumental risk.
“Why don’t you meet with their commander and talk to him about it?” I suggest. “Just you and him. Don’t drag everybody else into it until you’re absolutely sure that we need their help.”
“We don’t really need anybody’s help,” Chris replies. “But we could do a lot more with an extra force.” He stares at something in the distance, thinking. “That’s not a bad idea, Cassie. I should do that.”
“Can you get a message through to the Rangers using the Underground?”
“I should be able to.”
“Who’s in charge of their group?”
“I don’t know. Everybody’s got codenames.”
“Right. Alpha One.” I grin. “What’s their leader’s codename?”
“We’ll find out.” He stretches his long legs across the dirt, threading his fingers through mine. “The Underground also mentioned a huge Omega supply depot being stocked on the outskirts of the foothills. A lot of food and water are going in there. Omega’s tightening up security around the place – it’s important.”
“So we need to hit it, then?” I ask.
“Essentially.”
“Do we have enough manpower for that?”
“I think so. We’re outnumbered, but we’re smarter. And faster.” Chris looks down at our hands. “How are you holding up?”